A Probabilistic Analysis of a Scheduling Problem in the Economics of Tourism

The scheduling problem faced by a firm (or by a government agency) that is responsible for providing transportation to tourists who would like to visit a particular location has received scant theoretical attention in the tourism literature. Therefore, we conduct a probabilistic analysis of the scheduling problem in this paper. Specifically, we first delineate a generic model that accounts for the common features of visits to many locations such as fiords, game parks, lakes, and wildlife reserves. Next, we derive the transportation providing firm's long run expected profit per unit time function. Finally, we show that the optimal frequency with which transportation ought to be provided to tourists is the solution to our firm's long run expected profit maximization problem